POPULAR OLD SONGS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 60, 8 September 1931, Page 13

POPULAR OLD SONGS

It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afton! a carriage, jßnt-i-oii'll look sweet upon the scut .--■ Of a bicycle made for two. The old songs are coining back. "Daisy Bel!," "Little Dolly Daydream," "I May Be Crazy," "My Little Octoroon," and the rest of those lilting melodies which delighted musiehall audiences of a generation ago are enjoying a new lease of popularity, says an English newspaper. Errand boys arc whistling the old tunes, gramophones are playing them, no band concert in the park nowadays is complete without two or three being included in the programme. Instead of humming syncopated tunes about Ohio and Mississippi, people are succumbing anew to the fascinating rhythms of 40 and 50 years' ago. ' ' There is a great demand for these old songs just now," the manager of one of the largest music publishing houses in London said a. few weeks ago. "For the past twelve months they have slowly been gaining in popularity, and now'they look like becoming a craze. Many of our customers say lhat they have heard them played on the wireless, and they come in and ask lor them, thinking that they are new tunes. The songs composed by the late Leslie Stuart are enjoying the greatest popularity." Gramophone companies alsu report a big demand for Ihe did songs. "I May Be Crazy" and "My Little Oclorocin" have sold in their thousands. "The Man "Who Bioko the. .Hank at Monte Carlo," another nld favourite of the "nineties," is now often included in radio programmes.